Hi all! So I also managed to top 4 with a list very similar to this months back, but I put the deck on the shelf cause I didn't think it could beat the eldrazi menace that was showing up all over the place. I think that may have been a false assumption and I think this deck is perfectly well poised in its current iteration in the metagame. So below I'll post the list with an explanation of some card choices and then a brief tournament report.

This list has a lot of similarities to my 5-C lists from the spring but with some key improvements.

The manabase. I can now easily run 2 Horizon Canopy and 1 Karakas as well as 2 Ancient Ziggurat because I am no longer on the Abrupt Decay plan. Cards like Thought-Knot Seer are now a thing so Decay is no longer the card I want to be seeing in this deck all the time. Karakas was great for me all day long and being able to bounce my own Thalia or Kambal definitely came up once. The deck is predominantly GW so the 2 Canopies were fine and a big reason I didn’t run 4 Ziggurat is because Ziggurat can’t cast a Stony Silence and Stony Silence was HUUGE all day long.

6 Plow Effects. This didn’t come up much on the day cause I didn’t really face Eldrazi, but the maindeck Paths were actually decent at nabbing a Deathrite Shaman and a Sphinx of the Steel Wind.

Kambal. This guy was an easy swap for Scan-Clan Berserker and is a main reason the manabase feels a lot tighter as well. 1WB is far easier to cast in this deck than 1RR. Amazing card.

Up to 4 Pridemage. Another All-Star on the day. This card kept me safe under the threat of Time Vault on more than one occasion and I’m pretty sure I’d have lost multiple games if I hadn't stuck one of these guys.

SB ESG. Guides were amazing a couple key times during the day. I wish I could have made room for a 3rd one and perhaps I will down the road.

So a quick summary of my matches:

Round 1 vs. Jeskai Delver (2-0):

Game 1: This guy was a really nice guy who didn’t have a ton of experience playing Vintage so I thinkmy deck came as a bit of a shock to him. Game 1 was a bit of a grind with Mayor and me Reflecting hisDelver early. Can’t remember exactly how I got there.

Game 2: In this game I had Karakas early with both Thalia 1.0 and Kambal. It was pretty muchimpossible for him to break out of that lock.

Round 2 vs. Leovold Gush (0-2):

Game 1: I kept an iffy opener without much in the way of anti-blue tech expecting to lose game 1 anyway cause I thought Kevin would be on Dredge. I was mistaken and sadly my Mayor/Pridemage couldn’t out Aggro a Leovold with Pyromancer tokens.

Game 2: A near carbon copy of game 1. My opener involved a double mayor this time and a Thalia 2.0so I figured it was a sketchy keep but a keep. I had a Noble for turn 2 Thalia and then used a pathto nuke a DRS. Sadly, I drew no Thalia 1.0 or Kambal the whole game and he just did what gushdoes after removing Thalia 2.0 with a Dismember I believe. In hind sight I probably should havemulled into a hand that DOES something in this matchup and doesn’t just have big dorks, but Iwas worried about going to 6 or 5 vs. a value deck like Leovold Gush. That deck is utterly gross.

Round 3 vs. Ravager Shops (2-0):

Game 1: On the play I keep an opener with a Mox Sapphire, 3 Rainbow Lands, Noble, and Wastelandand a Mayor of Avabruck. I think this was mainly cause I knew my opponent likes to play shops, but that is part of the game. Game 1 is pretty much a breeze from there as myshop opponent locks herself under spheres and only seems to be able to draw tombs for mana.

Game 2: Here it’s a little more uncertain whether I’ll turn the corner early because she lands an earlyTKS that steals my Ancestral in hand. Thankfully I’m able to ride some wastes and a Mayor to Victory while stabilizing at 4 life. This one was more of a nail biter but I got there.

Round 4 vs. Grixis Outcome (2-0):

Game 1: I don’t remember all the details of this game, but I do recall having Thalia 1.0 in play and a Mantis Rider sealing the deal just a tiny bit faster than he could try to assemble Time Vault.

Game 2: Stony happened on turn 1 off ESG (loooove ESG). He had cast a Key, Mox and Lotus on turn 1 and later told me he was threatening turn 2 Desire for 4-5. I then had a waste for his Academy and it was over. Phew.

Round 5 vs. Academy Combo (2-0):

This was against my good buddy Danny Batterman and his list looked absolutely sweet.

Game 1: He makes a tough judgement call to hardcast Sphinx by popping a Lotus and basically leaving himself open to Reflector Mage. He had forgotten that was a card I run and had the Force for my Paths main. Luckily I had the Reflector Mage and Cavern up. Reflector really showed it’s power there.

Game 2: Stony hit the table pretty early and Danny was eventually able to find his echoing truth for it. fortunately I had set up pridemage and kambal and containment priest and gotten him to 5 life so I just pridemaged his mana vault in response to him attempting to untap it. He said afterwards that that was the right call because he would have played time spiral and had a chance to find an out to my board.

Overall, I had an amazing time playing 5-C Humans and would certainly bring it to another event or to champs. I highly recommend giving the deck a try at champs this year for any one bold enough to do so. I sadly won’t be able to attend so it would be great to have some brave player carry the torch of the little men. Whatever you do thought DOOOON’T cut MANTIS RIDER. That card is bonkers.

Any thoughts on the list or my matches? Numbers you'd change or cards to consider? Match-ups you think are weakest? (I happen to think that my weakest match-ups will be UW Landstill and Jaco-Drazi but I'd like to know other people's thoughts)

Round 1 vs. Jeskai Delver (2-0): Since the opponent is kind of new to vintage, that gives you some advantage (and the fact that your deck is a mystery for most of the people). However I consider Jeskai delver one of the bad pairings for this deck. Not abysmal by any means, but I think it's under 50%

Round 2 vs. Leovold Gush (0-2): this time you suffered the problem that your first opponent had: dealing with an unknown deck. Against that deck I think you have some advantage, at long as you can protect your manabase.

Round 3 vs. Ravager Shops (2-0): I think thaty you were really lucky to win first game after keeping a hand with 7 manasources and no action. It seems that mayor wins the game for you, but with a TKS in play you should be unfavoured so there should be more that I don't know.

4-1 (with 8-2 in matches) is a very solid result, but I'd only give full credit to the deck for the last 2 wins. For rounds 1 and 3 I think you drew better than your opponent (totally legit, sometimes is otherwise) so more data it's needed to figure out the performance of this deck in a big tournament. I also firmly believe this deck could be awesome against combo-control decks, specially paradoxical beasts.

@xouman I think its safe to say Stormie has more than this report to back up his humans build. He's been doing quite well in his paper tournaments for months now. I'm not sure how the deck would hold up tournaments like EE5 or champs. Almost no matter which deck you play, he's got main deck hate for it. The question is - does he draw his hate before you draw your key cards (like getting pridemage before you can get an oath trigger for example).

I'd be curious to see in a larger tournament that goes 6 or 7 rounds how consistent it is in that regard.

Round 1 vs. Jeskai Delver (2-0): Since the opponent is kind of new to vintage, that gives you some advantage (and the fact that your deck is a mystery for most of the people). However I consider Jeskai delver one of the bad pairings for this deck. Not abysmal by any means, but I think it's under 50%

Round 2 vs. Leovold Gush (0-2): this time you suffered the problem that your first opponent had: dealing with an unknown deck. Against that deck I think you have some advantage, at long as you can protect your manabase.

Round 3 vs. Ravager Shops (2-0): I think thaty you were really lucky to win first game after keeping a hand with 7 manasources and no action. It seems that mayor wins the game for you, but with a TKS in play you should be unfavoured so there should be more that I don't know.

4-1 (with 8-2 in matches) is a very solid result, but I'd only give full credit to the deck for the last 2 wins. For rounds 1 and 3 I think you drew better than your opponent (totally legit, sometimes is otherwise) so more data it's needed to figure out the performance of this deck in a big tournament. I also firmly believe this deck could be awesome against combo-control decks, specially paradoxical beasts.

Your evaluation of me vs. Delver is just patently wrong. I've beaten many good Delver players with my list because I can play the "burn" role against the "burn" deck quite well.

As for the Leovold deck, I knew exactly what I was facing. I just had hands that I couldn't quite mulligan that didn't quite get there. Game 2 had turn 1 Noble into turn 2 Thalia 2.0. I never drew anything relevant the rest of the game. That will occasionally happen even in a "relevant threat-dense" deck from time to time.

I just amended my opening hand vs. Shops game 1. I had a Mayor as the 7th card. I remember casting it on turn 1 and hoping for the best. Shops is definitely a matchup I'm pretty well prepared for as well. Quad Mayor and Quad Pridemage maindeck is a big part of this.

@xouman I think its safe to say Stormie has more than this report to back up his humans build. He's been doing quite well in his paper tournaments for months now. I'm not sure how the deck would hold up tournaments like EE5 or champs. Almost no matter which deck you play, he's got main deck hate for it. The question is - does he draw his hate before you draw your key cards (like getting pridemage before you can get an oath trigger for example).

I'd be curious to see in a larger tournament that goes 6 or 7 rounds how consistent it is in that regard.

If I can start off 2-0 out of the gates at a large event with this deck I'd put my deck up against most decks in the format to go all the way. This deck doesn't get a ton of negative variance and so one can go 6, 7, or 8 rounds without getting too many game-ending mulligans. Where I'd worry is in those first 2 rounds. If I couldn't pull them out I might fall into "the claw" and face decks like Goblins that might give my deck trouble. I will say that this deck has a little more potency vs. "the claw" than typical hatebears lists cause it runs cards that beat Type 2 shit like Mayor, Mantis Rider and Reflector Mage. Still, this deck will lose to some derpa derpa Inferno Titan bullshit or like Goblins.

@Stormanimagus I'll be blunt, and this as a frequent Hatebears proponent: I don't believe in the general Vintage playability of Mayor and Mantis (over, say, Tarmagoyf or Lord of Atlantis which also don't tend to cut it). I also think Reflector Mage, Qasali Pridemage, and Hierarch (and maybe Kambal) are also suboptimal even though they can be the right solution sometimes. The few times I've seen these cards online in Vintage, they often fail to disrupt sufficiently.

I don't know enough details about the quality of opposition even to make wild guesses. Maybe you could provide more in this respect - link to decklists, perhaps? I do know that many of the top Vintage players/authors play on MTGO dailies so I actually take that information more seriously.

I would be honestly delighted if you could help prove me wrong as I like critters.

@Stormanimagus I'll be blunt, and this as a frequent Hatebears proponent: I don't believe in the general Vintage playability of Mayor and Mantis (over, say, Tarmagoyf or Lord of Atlantis which also don't tend to cut it). I also think Reflector Mage, Qasali Pridemage, and Hierarch (and maybe Kambal) are also suboptimal even though they can be the right solution sometimes. The few times I've seen these cards online in Vintage, they often fail to disrupt sufficiently.

I don't know enough details about the quality of opposition even to make wild guesses. Maybe you could provide more in this respect - link to decklists, perhaps? I do know that many of the top Vintage players/authors play on MTGO dailies so I actually take that information more seriously.

I would be honestly delighted if you could help prove me wrong as I like critters.

The top 4 decklists are posted. Danny Batterman was one of my opponents. I dare say he's a competent pilot of pretty much any deck you throw in front of him. As to the cards you question the viability of. No offense, but I have a lot of experience with these cards and they are integral to what this deck is trying to do. Let me break it down:

Mantis Rider - Ugh. The number of players who say to cut this card is so high, but those are often the players who don't deck build and who simply borrow their friend's Mentor list card for card at a large event. Let me ask you this: Do you think Reality Smasher is a playable Vintage Card that serves a purpose? If that card had vigilance would you daresay it was busted? Do I really need to go into this further? Flies over token armies and ends games.

@Stormanimagus
Honestly, all the top 4 decks look rough to me, although I appreciate that experimentation may be playing somewhat of a role before Champs. Contrary t your assertion, I don't see brilliance regarding use of tempo.

Some thoughts on your card comments:

Is Mayor better than Kataki for Shops (it gets boarded out everywhere else)? Kataki crimps mana of the bigger decks at little cost to your own. Mayor is ignorable for a couple of turns at any rate. Obviously Mayor has his points over Kataki, but I remain unconvinced.

I don't buy Mantis Rider being near the power level, contextually, of Reality Smasher. Smasher is in the deck to clock opponents at twice the rate or more of Rider, with inherent protection, unlike Rider, to Lightning Bolt. Rider's mana cost can get in the way too.

Reflector Mage seems slow or limited. It does nothing against (currently) creatureless decks and seems like it gets trumped by other decks at the same point of the mana curve.

Not to belabor this tit for tat, you asked for opinions and I gave a response you disagree with vehemently. Fine. Hopefully someone else can jump in with additional insights.

Round 1 vs. Jeskai Delver (2-0): Since the opponent is kind of new to vintage, that gives you some advantage (and the fact that your deck is a mystery for most of the people). However I consider Jeskai delver one of the bad pairings for this deck. Not abysmal by any means, but I think it's under 50%

Round 2 vs. Leovold Gush (0-2): this time you suffered the problem that your first opponent had: dealing with an unknown deck. Against that deck I think you have some advantage, at long as you can protect your manabase.

Round 3 vs. Ravager Shops (2-0): I think thaty you were really lucky to win first game after keeping a hand with 7 manasources and no action. It seems that mayor wins the game for you, but with a TKS in play you should be unfavoured so there should be more that I don't know.

4-1 (with 8-2 in matches) is a very solid result, but I'd only give full credit to the deck for the last 2 wins. For rounds 1 and 3 I think you drew better than your opponent (totally legit, sometimes is otherwise) so more data it's needed to figure out the performance of this deck in a big tournament. I also firmly believe this deck could be awesome against combo-control decks, specially paradoxical beasts.

Your evaluation of me vs. Delver is just patently wrong. I've beaten many good Delver players with my list because I can play the "burn" role against the "burn" deck quite well.

As for the Leovold deck, I knew exactly what I was facing. I just had hands that I couldn't quite mulligan that didn't quite get there. Game 2 had turn 1 Noble into turn 2 Thalia 2.0. I never drew anything relevant the rest of the game. That will occasionally happen even in a "relevant threat-dense" deck from time to time.

I just amended my opening hand vs. Shops game 1. I had a Mayor as the 7th card. I remember casting it on turn 1 and hoping for the best. Shops is definitely a matchup I'm pretty well prepared for as well. Quad Mayor and Quad Pridemage maindeck is a big part of this.

-Storm

Maybe I'm wrong, of course, but I have seen quite a bunch of matches in cockatrice of you playing some hatebears/human deck, and I have played quite aggro-control decks to know where are the problems. Probably this delver deck was no so efficiently oriented, or maybe some of the new key cards unbalance the pairing on your favour, but as an aggrocontrol deck I never want to face delver decks.

I'm not saying you don't have tools against delver or mud. On the other hand, yourdeck has tools against ANY other deck in current metagame. But without manipulation, you are relying on good draws. Draw some consecutive mana sources, all the legends... and you are facing a bad time. 6 answers to tinker is nice, but you have a good percentage of not drawing them in front of BSC. Mayor or mantis can be awesome, but they are poor against combo decks. In a good day you can win every match of every round because all your cards do something in the right time, and they play well together. But please understand that unlike MUD or White trash they play several roles and not just one, so you can be drawing aggro when you need hate and viceversa.

And of course there is another point. I don't know any player that has played more vintage hatebears than you, so don't expect any other guy to pick this deck and get spectacular results. It can work of course, because deck is good, but it often involves decisions and not everybody has your experience to understand what is better in any moment.

Why no Moms in this list? With swords and bolts being played like its 1995 you would think she would be amazing. Otherwise loving it. Have you tried the new 2/1 Chalice or not, and if so your thoughts?

Why no Moms in this list? With swords and bolts being played like its 1995 you would think she would be amazing. Otherwise loving it. Have you tried the new 2/1 Chalice or not, and if so your thoughts?

If Swords and Bolts are so prevalent, then forget Mom; in that case, no one should be playing this deck unless that person isn't results-oriented and just wants fun. The raw power of just about any other Vintage deck is miles better than Hatebears (and I love Hatebears), so Hatebears has to attack a particular weakness in a defined metagame, or else it either gets lucky or fares poorly.

@Stormanimagus
Honestly, all the top 4 decks look rough to me, although I appreciate that experimentation may be playing somewhat of a role before Champs. Contrary t your assertion, I don't see brilliance regarding use of tempo.

Some thoughts on your card comments:

Is Mayor better than Kataki for Shops (it gets boarded out everywhere else)? Kataki crimps mana of the bigger decks at little cost to your own. Mayor is ignorable for a couple of turns at any rate. Obviously Mayor has his points over Kataki, but I remain unconvinced.

I don't buy Mantis Rider being near the power level, contextually, of Reality Smasher. Smasher is in the deck to clock opponents at twice the rate or more of Rider, with inherent protection, unlike Rider, to Lightning Bolt. Rider's mana cost can get in the way too.

Reflector Mage seems slow or limited. It does nothing against (currently) creatureless decks and seems like it gets trumped by other decks at the same point of the mana curve.

Not to belabor this tit for tat, you asked for opinions and I gave a response you disagree with vehemently. Fine. Hopefully someone else can jump in with additional insights.

Mantis Rider often beats for 4 or 5 under Mayor/Exalted Triggers. How on Earth is Smasher twice the rate of that "or more?" Last I checked 4 is 1 less than 5 and not half of 5. Mantis also sits back on defense and is most often cast uncoutnerably in this deck. Every Land in the deck with a couple exceptions taps for the mana to cast a Mantis Rider. It's mana cost is fine. Trust me on that. Mantis Rider is a repeatable lightning bolt that soars over stupid Mentor/Pyromancer Tokens for wins against those decks constantly. I have won countless games vs. those deck precisely because I top decked the rider and no other card would have done it. I don't know if the burden of proof is on me anymore to show that this card is good enough because it has proven itself countless times. I'd say rather that the burden of proof is on the folks who claim it is not Vintage playable.

Tarmogoyf is a flaming pile of poo these days in the face of token armies. I will agree with you there. Aside from being, ya know, a human, Mantis Rider is leagues above Tarmogoyf in aggro strategies. The fact that you'd even try to draw a comparison between the two cards means that you really just don't comprehend what the flying, vigilance, and haste are doing for the card. Do you like not understand what combat abilities mean in the current environment? They are everything vs. decks that attempt to win via the combat step (hint hint: such decks are the VAST majority of Vintage right now if you didn't get the memo). Rider also doesn't come out vs. combo (though Mayor does admittedly) because it can often slam the door on combo decks using their life total as a resource and aggressively necro/bargaining. It obviously isn't the main card you want to see vs. combo, but it certainly can stay in. Mayors do come out vs. pure combo though you are correct on that front.

As for Reflector Mage I am not quite sure you understand the amount of "time walks" the card can give you vs. combat based decks. Even vs. combo decks I'd argue that Reflector Mage is a necessary evil because once they see that I'm on a "hatebears" deck their new plan A will be Tinker->BSC or Tinker->Sphinx. Reflector can uncounterably answer both. Mage is also good vs. Mentor at bouncing Mentors and keeping more tokens from littering the board for at least one more turn. That can make all the difference in the world in the damage race.

As for Kambal, I'm a bit shocked that you are down on this card. This card IS a classic hatebear lol! The card creates unwinnable game states for blue players quite quickly in tandem with the direct damage from Mantis Riders/Other beats/self-inflicted damage by blue players.

My last point before I get off my proverbial soap box is this: we live in a Vintage format more governed by the spending of life than ever before. Consider the following ubiquitous cards in a typical blue Gush list:

Now consider the other Elephant in the room on the Thorn deck side of things:

Ancient Tomb (2 life per activation!)

Notice that I didn't even have to go to Necropotence or Bargain or Sylvan Library to find a bunch of widely played cards that cost life. My point here is that many MANY Vintage decks will have dealt themselves 4-5 damage by turn 3 right now so the Human deck's task will be to deal 15 damage over the first 4-5 turns often while throwing down soft lock elements and controlling cards. The cards that "keep you from losing" vs. combat centric decks are things like Reflector Mage, Mantis Rider, Mayor, Thalia 2.0 and Path/Plow. The cards that "keep you from losing" vs. combo/Time Vault decks are Thalia 1.0, Kambal, Stony and Pridemage (for Time Vault especially). The deck is very balanced at running a good spread of these types of cards and many of them overlap across many match - ups. On top of that the deck is always looking to pressure life totals and life total greed is an easily exploitable weakness of decks in the format right now.

This is why I have success with this particular deck at the moment. It's really offensive to hear players say I just got lucky or didn't face good players. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm proud of the level of competition at Knight Ware Inc. There are a lot of seasoned veterans there and also up and coming stars on the Vintage scene. Before tearing apart my list perhaps folks posting on here could do me the courtesy of offering as much explanation as I just did to defend my card choices. It takes effort, but if you truly like "hatebears" then chatting about it and formulating insightful remarks shouldn't feel like work.

Lastly, I'd caution players to even think of this deck as "hatebears." This is a Cavern deck. It is "Humans." The "Human" creature type is central to how the deck works. Turning off Force of Wills indefinitely is something this deck does quite well (obviously Pridemage being the one glaring exception but Pridemage is just bonkers good all the time. It is basically a better Phyrexian Revoker most the time with more flexibility and ability to dominate combat).

I hope this post helps clear up things for everyone reading the threat and not just @BazaarOfBaghdad.

Because we haven't devolved into a format of 8 removal spells per deck along with wastelands in those same decks. Until we reach that tipping point I'd rather just keep my opponents occupied removing my shit and continue to slam threats. That way I save 3-4 precious deck slots for actual business. The only times I tend to want Moms are vs. UW Landstill and occasionally vs. BUG Fish with quad Snapcaster (not really played much anymore). I think decks are starting to have to address Paradoxical Outcome more and that will take the spot removal down even another notch. Until the format shifts to huge amounts of spot removal AND wastes (for my caverns to turn FoWs on) I think I can keep the stream of 'must answer' threats coming faster than my opponents can removal them.

Mother of runes just doesn't fit this deck's game plan. Its filled with creatures that simultaneously fill the role of agro-stick and light lock piece. Mom can either attack or protect but not both. If you are bringing her in for protection she's not doing damage. As storm said, you want to do roughly 15 points of damage in the first 5 turns. She doesn't contribute to this game plan.